The Human Senses

Speech development in individuals who lack adequate auditory input and response /feedback is well-documented as being markedly limited . By observing those individuals who face hearing loss in infancy and early childhood , speech development is seen to be delayed and dised especially when the hearing loss is severe

Obviously , an ’93awesome task confronts the human infant as it embarks on the process of analyzing and understanding the complexities of adult speech ’94 because the infant must learn to extract and differentiate ’93phonetic information from exceedingly variable [banner_entry_middle]

acoustic material ’94 not to mention the challenge of ’93normalizing across speakers with vocal tracts of different sizes , and comprehending the structural variation of speaking at different rates ’94 (Eimas Miller , 1981 ,

. 76 . Audition performs a key sensorimotor role in the development of speech children learn , with experience , to use audition to monitor ongoing speech , detect errors , and make corrective adjustments . In mature speakers , error detection and monitoring of speaking conditions are a primary role of audition . Audition helps speakers decide if their articulators are producing appropriate and effective sounds auditing is , therefore , a contributor to speech integrity maintenance (Eimas and Miller

Similarly , the human sense of smell seems to factor reciprocally in human memory function , although the substantive , scientific evidence for the specific processes involved remain somewhat mysterious . ’93The power of odors to unlock human memory is celebrated in literature and anecdote but poorly documented by science . Odors , perhaps more than other stimuli , are widely believed to evoke vivid and complex past experiences easily . Yet in contrast to the frequency with which odors are thought to evoke memories of the past scientific evidence is thus far scanty ’94 (Crowder , 1995 ,

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Human Senses Page -2- If smell plays a role in memory , what of the other human chemical sense : taste ? ’93Flavors are derived from the senses of smell , taste and touch but are not easily separated into their sensory components ’94 (Mair , 1995 ,

. 45 ) Perhaps a good analogy for the sense of taste is the sense of spatial location . Spatial location is determined by information received from ’93multiple sensory inputs (vision , audition , touch , and smell ) and is thought , by some , to be represented separately from modality-specific information ’94 (Mair 1995 ,p . 45

Like taste , the cutaneous senses are myriad and difficult to quantify Touch factors : temperature , pressure , vibration , among other stimuli In touch , when we experience a simple sensation , we may in fact be synthesizing sensations from various sensors (Gescheider

Pain is also difficult to quantify , but , unlike taste , there are direct neural pathways provided in the human body to transmit the sensation of pain : in the which alert to physical . Congenital Analgesia , lack of the ability to experience pain , can result in trauma such as ’93permanent skeletal deformities that often result in such patients because of their tendency to ignore injuries that would immediately stop the rest of us from using the wounded part (Gunderman , 2002